Catsoulis PNG project queried by Impact Gold liquidator

The liquidator of Impact Gold says there appears to be no evidence held by the company indicating it had any tenure in PNG, or has any gold to show for its years of work.

David Catsoulis from Impact Gold in Papua New Guinea sometime around 2019. Picture: Instagram

Twice bankrupt mining spruiker David Catsoulis has been promoting a multi-billion dollar gold mining project in Papua New Guinea for the past seven years.

The only problem is the liquidator of the Catsoulis company which owns it is struggling to find much evidence that it exists.

Since at least 2019, Catsoulis has been raising money from investors to fund his alluvial gold project in the Maprik region of PNG, first through his company PGL Gold, which was later folded into Impact Gold.

He told The Australian back in 2021 that the project, in the depths of PNG jungle, was about honouring his family legacy and giving back to the local community, while making a fortune for his investors along the way. Catsoulis was still an undischarged bankrupt at the time.

Catsoulis, in documents provided to would-be investors, was touting the project as “part of a humanitarian solution’’ for the region, with a 50:50 revenue sharing arrangement delivering health, education and housing opportunities. And there would be plenty of revenue to share, with an information memorandum saying the “proven gold resources” were worth at least $2.4bn.

Catsoulis told The Australian in early 2021 that the Maprik project was “progressing very well’’, and he expected mining leases would be granted in the “next couple of weeks’’.

The Australian sighted an email which purported to corroborate this and other correspondence with the PNG regulator at the time.

“The project’s had a great amount of due diligence done on the resource. The resource stacks up incredibly well,” Catsoulis said.

“As far as the size of the resource goes, we’ve only really touched the tip of the iceberg on it.’’

He described its origins as almost accidental: he was on a family legacy project to retrace his father’s wartime history when he was deployed in the region, and made the trip at his mother’s ­request.

“Probably the first night I was there I think I had probably 30 people coming to my door in the hotel wanting to sell me gold. I just gave them 50 kina and said, ‘no, not interested’.

“I had one guy come in and he said ‘I’ve got a very large amount of gold I’d like you to buy’ … and I looked at it and thought, ‘that’s just incredible’.

“The amount, the size, the grains of gold were all fingernail size and above and I thought ‘where has it come from?’ … One thing led to another and about a week later we were on site at a place called Maprik panning gold like I’d never seen before.”

The project has not, as far as The Australian can tell, mined any gold of note, nor paid out the outlandish returns of 200 per cent within the three weeks it was promising to investors.

And the liquidator of Impact Gold now says there appears to be no evidence held by the company indicating it had any tenure in PNG, owns any plant or equipment, or has any gold inventory to show for its years of work.

“The director (Catsoulis) has advised that the company is not in possession of any paperwork that relates to alleged mining leases in New Guinea,’’ the liquidator says.

“In other words, the company has no security of tenure over anything in New Guinea.

“This is contrary to the annual report of 2024 which states when referring to the Maprik area in New Guinea that ‘The gold deposits were identified back then and were subsequently secured at Maprik under difficult landowner conditions.’

“For a company of this size and scope and the level of monies provided by multiple shareholders, the lack of any security of tenure documentation is not acceptable and is in my view a breach of fiduciary duties to the company on the part of all directors.’’

The liquidator also said there was no evidence of any “work in progress”.

“Based on feedback from shareholders about information provided to them when purchasing shares in the company relating to alleged works carried out in New Guinea, it is inconceivable to me that there is no work in progress of any value to report in the balance sheet of the company unless this work was never carried out,’’ the liquidator says.

Catsoulis told the liquidator in a report detailing the company’s assets that it owned five alluvial dredges worth about $35,000 which were in PNG.

“The company’s auditors have not been able to verify the existence of any plant and equipment,’’ the liquidators’ report states.

Unsecured creditors of the company are owed about $3.7m, the report says, and while the company claims to be owed $5.8m by two other companies, these are also Catsoulis entities which are yet to repay these funds despite a demand from the liquidator.

Catsoulis told The Australian that while he had not seen the report, the claim that the company did not have tenure in PNG was “garbage”.

“We have held our various tenures for years via PNG Gold and its associated PNG subsidiaries. Had I been asked any questions about this issue it is more than easy to show the related entities and tenure,’’ he replied by text.

Mr Catsoulis said there were complex local relationships in PNG for holding alluvial mining leases.

“In relation to our mining lease over the Sowom River the tenure was granted to our local partner E-port Ltd which has a local agreement with Impact Gold.

“This agreement states that the shares in the local company E-port has to be transferred to our holding entity at the sole discretion of Impact Gold as and when the operations become a profit making enterprise in exchange for an agreed amount.’’

A search of the PNG mining portal shows E-Port lodged a mining lease application over the Sowom River area in March 2023.

Catsoulis has also in recent years falsely claimed to have the rights to a Queensland precious metals project worth trillions of dollars through another vehicle, Warwick Gold Holdings, and recently launched a new fundraising venture along the same lines.

A liquidator’s report into Warwick Gold found it had racked up $10m in debts while it was already insolvent.

Warwick Gold claimed it owned $13.2m worth of precious metal rods which were secured safely in a warehouse.

That warehouse however, was located on a sparsely populated atoll in the Solomon Islands, which doesn’t appear to boast an airstrip. The liquidator has not subsequently been able to verify the whereabouts of the supposed precious metal rods.

Mr Catsoulis had claimed Warwick Gold was sitting on a precious metals project worth $2 trillion at its Texas tenements in Queensland. However, the company was never the legal owner of the tenements.

Impact Gold’s directors include Jack Smit, a former business associate of Melbourne gangland figure Tony Mokbel, and former Queensland Labor senator Claire Moore.

Originally published as Catsoulis PNG project queried by Impact Gold liquidator